Site converting only 0.09%. Help needed

[Krissnaps]

I get a decent amount of traffic on my site from my social media, organic and also PPC but the site is converting only about 0.9%. Any ideas why? 

Tried different urgency amplifiers, the images and product description seems good. Site has bugs but still not a great conversion rate.

www.varsitybase.com

[Erica · Accepted solution]

Hi @Krissnaps !

Erica here from Shopify.

If your traffic is high and the conversion is low, I would check a few things:

What's the User Experience like on your store?

When designing an e-commerce website, you want to take into consideration your different target audiences.

Ideally your aim is to inspire, inform and convert.

Make sure your store looks professional, the navigation is clear and simple, the transition to checkout is smooth and intuitive, that there aren't too many annoying pop-ups.

Check out the strategies below:

• 3 Strategies for Improving User Experience in Your Ecommerce

So I would also take into considerations factors like:

• Language: is your store available in more languages (if marketing to an international audience)?
• Missing, incomplete or hard to find information: for example, where do you ship? I couldn't find any info about Shipping.

• Accessibility: your store score in terms of accessibility is extremely important for the user experience, and also influences your SEO rankings. You can find more info about this in the doc Accessibility for themes.

Are you attracting the right customers to your website?

It is important that you attract to your site only people interested in what you sell.

If the majority of your traffic comes from Social Media, you could try Kit, a free app, created and supported by Shopify, that integrates with your platform and can help you create Facebook ads, including dynamic retargeting campaigns, that show ads only to those most likely to buy.

You'll find all the info in the doc Automating tasks using Kit.

Also, this Blog Post will guide you through different ways you can test to find your target audience and guide you through the necessary steps improve your conversion rate:

• The Beginner's Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization — Conversion Rate Optimization

Lastly, please note that the conversion rate is important, but, I would also take into account your average order value: if your website has a high conversion rate for very small orders, it is not necessarily better than a website with a low conversion rate but a very high average order value.

Overall, this isn't an exact science, and I suggest you to go through the info I sent you and start testing the different approaches shown there.

Let me know how you get on!

Best of luck,

Erica

[Erica · Accepted solution]

Hi @Krissnaps !

Erica here from Shopify.

If your traffic is high and the conversion is low, I would check a few things:

What's the User Experience like on your store?

When designing an e-commerce website, you want to take into consideration your different target audiences.

Ideally your aim is to inspire, inform and convert.

Make sure your store looks professional, the navigation is clear and simple, the transition to checkout is smooth and intuitive, that there aren't too many annoying pop-ups.

Check out the strategies below:

• 3 Strategies for Improving User Experience in Your Ecommerce

So I would also take into considerations factors like:

• Language: is your store available in more languages (if marketing to an international audience)?
• Missing, incomplete or hard to find information: for example, where do you ship? I couldn't find any info about Shipping.

• Accessibility: your store score in terms of accessibility is extremely important for the user experience, and also influences your SEO rankings. You can find more info about this in the doc Accessibility for themes.

Are you attracting the right customers to your website?

It is important that you attract to your site only people interested in what you sell.

If the majority of your traffic comes from Social Media, you could try Kit, a free app, created and supported by Shopify, that integrates with your platform and can help you create Facebook ads, including dynamic retargeting campaigns, that show ads only to those most likely to buy.

You'll find all the info in the doc Automating tasks using Kit.

Also, this Blog Post will guide you through different ways you can test to find your target audience and guide you through the necessary steps improve your conversion rate:

• The Beginner's Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization — Conversion Rate Optimization

Lastly, please note that the conversion rate is important, but, I would also take into account your average order value: if your website has a high conversion rate for very small orders, it is not necessarily better than a website with a low conversion rate but a very high average order value.

Overall, this isn't an exact science, and I suggest you to go through the info I sent you and start testing the different approaches shown there.

Let me know how you get on!

Best of luck,

Erica

[mccaly · Accepted solution]

Hi @Krissnaps,

By 'conversion' I presume you mean from a customer landing on your site to making a purchase?

Is the conversion 0.9% (in question copy) or 0.09% (from the question headline)?

If 0.9%, it's not great but not the worst (about 50% off the industry average - see here). 0.09% sounds like there could be a serious for some users.

1) How are the users coming to your site - i.e are all users (social, organic, PPC) converting at the same rate or is there a difference between the channels? If one channel is far worse than others investigate what could be causing the issue. The issue could be from low quality users (or bots) or they simply have misaligned expectations (are the ads you are running sending users to the wrong product - i.e it is a red jacket in ad but they get sent to a black jacket)?

2) What part of the funnel do users drop off? Landing page, product page, checkout (payment, shipping, etc). You should map these out and compare against industry averages to see if one step in the customers journey is causing the most pain and the drop off.

At this stage it's about pin-pointing the issue. Once you know what could be causing the issue we can dive into potential solutions.

[DuaneBrown]

Even with a good CTR or tons of traffic, if people are not buying then it's not the right traffic. Not all traffic is created equal. The one thing we tell each client is that you can get traffic of all kinds but that does not mean it's the right traffic for your store. There are some tweaks I would make to your product pages:

Product Page  Feedback

1. Add a section at the bottom of product pages to show your most viewed/bought items from the site. This can help increase your average order value
   
   
2. Move the sizing chart link closer to where people pick their size
   
   
3. Add a longer product description as this is how you convince someone to buy on your site. Plus it helps with SEO and ranking in organic search
   
   
4. Add a section for customer reviews when you get them. This helps build social proof
   
   

Your store just needs some tweaks to take it up a level but even with these changes, it sounds like you need to improve on the traffic you are getting to your store. Hope you found this helpful, if so please click "like" below to let me know.

[Krissnaps]

Thank you for your feedback! Much appreciated!

[Amit_Roznak1]

Hi,

If you haven't begun using an automated advertising system, you might be significantly under-utilizing your site potential. Consider how important retargeting is as your clients move in and out of your sales funnel. This is particularly true when using social media advertising where competition can be quite interesting!

Here at AdScale, we recommend always using a system with AT LEAST AI automated processes for cross channel and platform advertising as well as bid and budget automatons. This can make a significant difference in your targeted advertising and improve your conversion rates. 

Moreover, I suggest trying out a Free store analyzer to help work out your bugs and to be sure that your website is optimized since we cannot always catch every detail. Additionally, there are often quite a few details going on behind the scenes that we miss, and these details can dramatically affect the effectiveness and purposefulness of your site as well as your advertising budget.

So, using a free Store Checkup Tool like the one from AdScale might be of help. It will give you a report on how ready your site is to advertise and deliver you actionable fixes if need be.

If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me.

[socially-kevin]

it would be interesting to see your FB ad and the stats behind that.  Assuming "decent amount of traffic" is a 100-300 visits a day, I find most people don't impulse buy a product over $30.  One thing would be to make sure you are retargeting that traffic to remind them that they are interested in you.

Also, your tagline is "Genuinely American" but I didn't see anything that said "made in the usa" (although I looked quickly).  Also your story doesn't show any shots of people working on the product.  If things are still made by Sandy, I would have more shots of the sewing machine.

If your product is usa made, I would lead with that.  And retarget the traffic you are getting.  

Hope that helps

thanks

Kevin

[Answerbase]

Well, you need to get to the root of why customers are bouncing....and there are some things that are in your control that you can optimize immediately.   For example, NNGroup did a study where they found that around 20% of ecommerce failures were do to bad product information....this is what they said:

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In our e-commerce studies, we found that 20% of the overall task failures in the study — times when users failed to successfully complete a purchase when asked to do so — could be attributed to incomplete or unclear product information. Leaving shoppers' questions unanswered can derail a sale or even worse, make shoppers abandon not just the purchase, but the site as well. One shopper in a recent study could not find the information he needed in the product description, so he left the site to search Google for more product information. In the course of his search, he found another site with the same product, a more complete description, and a lower price.

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This is within your control to change.   A few hints on what to do that can increase this:

• Product Descriptions: Make sure these are engaging and informative.  Depending on the type of product....simply by creating an engaging description that highlights the "why" of the purchase can get people to bite....before digging into the "what" they are buying.  Then, make sure you are clearly describing the "what"....this will help not only with conversions but reducing returns and negative reviews.
• Product Questions and Answers: Give all those visitors a way to engage you if they just need a bit more information before the purchase.  Don't let them bounce!  Give them an opportunity to ask...and if you use an app like Answerbase they have case studies where up to 75% of questions asked and answered through them convert to a sale.   It has other benefits as well like adding Q&A content on your product page that helps with SEO and also span it's own product Q&A landing pages which has quadrupled the organic traffic for some stores.
• Create a Video: Create engaging videos that describe the product as well...and SELL it.  The beauty of this is you get to be an AWESOME salesperson in that video and make sure you nail the pitch every time!    You don't have to depend on an employee or yourself...who fall to natural human tendencies in having a bad day and may botch the pitch...you can record a kick butt video that does a kick butt job that sells the product and ensure you nail it for once and for all.   You want to give an experience that brick and mortar cant....you're that experience...and you can effectively communicate to thousands of customers at the same time with one great video post!

Hope this was helpful for you, happy selling!